Kvitova is a prodigious talent, a bedeviling southpaw who has won two Grand Slam tournaments, a WTA year-end championship and 27 tour-level titles–most recently on the red clay in Stuttgart just over three weeks ago. She has a swerving, shutdown serve and a shotmaker’s yen for cracking winners.
“Petra is absolutely capable of taking a match away from someone,” the clever counterpuncher Ashleigh Barty said after losing to Kvitova in January. “At times it’s very much out of my control, what she does from her end of the court.”
Yet a graph of Kvitova’s career is noteworthy for its valleys as well as its peaks. She’s been a win away from the No. 1 ranking, but never achieved it. She’s looked unbeatable at majors, only to lose the plot and take a baffling loss. Between her second title at Wimbledon in 2014 and the 2016 US Open, Kvitova reached the quarterfinals at a Slam just once in nine tries. Her career-redefining run Down Under improved her record in Grand Slam quarterfinals to a middling 6–5.
The reason: a still-unresolved, career-long battle with nerves.
“The nerves were there again,” Kvitova acknowledged at Wimbledon last July, after losing in the first round to 50th-ranked Aliaksandra Sasnovich. “I just tried to fight with myself. I was probably the biggest opponent.”
Kvitova is often asked how the Czech Republic manages to produce so many terrific tennis players, including Hall of Famers Ivan Lendl, Martina Navratilova and Jana Novotna. Her reply has become a stock one: “Maybe something in the water or in the air.”
Or maybe something in the parents. Kvitova was introduced to the game by her father Jiri Kvita, a schoolteacher and, as a coach, a stern taskmaster. She had a fine if not dazzling junior career that peaked with an ITF junior ranking of No. 27. It didn’t take long for her to capitalize on her built-in lefty advantage, flat groundstrokes and the power she’s capable of generating with her 6-foot height and long limbs. Her turf-ready game earned her the Wimbledon junior title in 2007.
As a pro, Kvitova popped onto the scene in a big way at 19, when she bounced world No. 1 Dinara Safina out of the 2009 US Open. The following year, she made the semifinals at Wimbledon, and then won it all in 2011.
Beaten at her own power game in that Wimbledon final, 6–3, 6–4, Maria Sharapova admitted that Kvitova simply “hit deeper and harder,” adding, “she has a tremendous amount of potential to go even further and achieve many great things.”
But Kvitova wasn’t fully prepared for the pressure and stress created by her sudden fame. Friendly but shy, she found it difficult to adjust to the limelight. She felt pressure from the outside, and piled massive expectations upon herself.
“You’re thinking you have to win every single match because you won a Grand Slam,” Kvitova put it recently about her early-career success.
Kvitova adjusted to life near the top, but kinks remained in her game and temperament. A streaky player by nature, Kvitova has been subject to dramatic mood swings that have her cracking bold winners for a period, then spraying balls all over the court in other intervals. In big matches, her nerves often betrayed her.
At its best, Kvitova’s hot-and-cold game has carried her as close as you can get to tennis’ summit without reaching it. In the semifinals of the 2012 Australian Open, a win over Sharapova would have given Kvitova the No. 1 ranking. She led by a break
in the third set, but Sharapova prevailed. The No. 1 ranking also was up for grabs in this year’s Australian Open final. Kvitova held the momentum after winning the second set, but it was Osaka who took both prizes.
The mind is like 80 percent of the game,” Kvitova said after her 7–6 (2), 5–7, 6–4 loss to the unflappable Osaka. “You really have to believe in yourself. Sometimes everyone has those troubles to do that. I think that’s human. I’m not [an] exception.”